Welcome! If you are new to BitTorrent, this site should help clear up a lot of commonly asked questions.

Please note: This site is mostly a mirror of the FAQ at http://dessent.net/btfaq/. That site is updated first, so this one may be a little bit behind in some places.

If you would like to check your firewall/NAT port forwarding configuration, try the Natcheck page.

Disclaimer: I am a Windows user, and so by default the answers will tend to apply to Windows if not otherwise stated. I've tried to include as much Linux and Mac information as I can. If you have anything to add on those subjects, by all means please contribute.

UPDATE: I'm afraid I have had to disable edits of this FAQ from the general public. I was getting perhaps one or two erronious additions daily, which resulted in a lot of work for me to clear out. There were sections with up to a dozen blank "New Item" objects that someone added without knowing what they were doing. I appreciate the handful of you that contributed useful answers, but I do not have the time to clean up after the rest of you, so the FAQ is now read-only.

Table of Contents

Background InformationInstalling BitTorrentGetting Started with BitTorrentConfiguring Your Network for BitTorrentOpening/Viewing/Using Files You've DownloadedTroubleshooting Errors and ProblemsAdvanced TopicsGetting Help and SupportLinks to Popular BitTorrent Sites

If you wish to contact me for any reason, please use this link to send me a message. --Brian